MTG Salvation

Just trying out Bring to Light in Prophet's place tomorrow, it should be ok.

I have lands like Exotic Orchard and Forbidden Orchard to bring my Converge to 5 for that card so it tutors for Seedborn Muse, and there's enough targets for it to hit something decent at 3 mana if only on BUG.

How has Bring to Light fared?

I haven't casted it, but, I like it in theory. Nothing else has really caught my eye in the last few sets to replace it.

Because I haven't yet, here's the current list I'm running, though I don't play it very often. I do think it would make a great Emperor deck... if you're the Emperor.


I rather want to try using Elbrus, the Binding Blade as a silly win condition sometime, simply because I haven't found a place for that thing, yet.

Finally got another game in last night. I know some pretty stubborn non-concede players, so it took 3 hours. Their 2 decks (Derevi allies and Oloro extort/discard) were a bit controlling, too.

Managed to use Head Games finally. Oloro was having mana troubles and > 7 cards in hand, so they discarded Megrim, which told me they otherwise liked the rest of their hand. So I replaced their hand with 4 lands (giving them their missing colors), Cyclonic Rift, Safe Passage, and Disenchant. Mostly because Derevi was forming a bit of an Ally army with the help of Retreat to Emeria. They eventually did Disenchant the Retreat and then overload Rift to deal with the army.

Because of that and Oloro using Crypt Ghast and his own card-draw ability to whittle our life down repeatedly, Derevi was happy to keep giving me back Hero's Downfall to prevent triggering the use of Oloro's card-draw trigger on the upkeep life gain and eventually make Oloro too expensive to recast, (12 mana was the highest they paid during that part of the game, I think). Leaving Crypt Ghast on the board long enough for them to whittle me down to 8 was possibly a mistake, but I think it also made them feel comfortable that if they could just draw an answer, they might be able to finish me off, because they were well above 40 life.

It finally ended with all 3 Vows on Tasigur and using Spitting Image to copy the last opponent's Karlov, then repeatedly sacrificing Dryad Arbor to High Market to build him up. Azusa and Thespian's Stage helped speed that up.

Thoughts from this game:

• I need to remember to dredge LftL out of the graveyard before activating Tasigur, or they're going to give that back to me.
• The Vows are still experimental. Oloro kept giving me those instead of removal or tutor spells, so they seem easy to recur so far. However, putting Vow of Malice on Oloro doesn't help that opponent get through to whittle Derevi down much.
• I need to work on my manabase. Without the Zendikar fetches and original dual lands the other fetches eventually were pretty useless except as fodder for Constant Mists (unless they produced C). With artifact recursion possible, I'm also considering Chromatic Lantern.
• Fact or Fiction seems to take even more time than a Tasigur activation and I'm not always keen to get it back. I'm a bit iffy on this card.
• I feel like I should test Curse of the Swine, but it's not an instant.

Anyone else thinking about running Brain in a jar in their build?

Quote from JamesTheIV »

Anyone else thinking about running Brain in a jar in their build?

At first I was like "not so much", but I'm reconsidering testing that. The problem is I don't play the deck very often due to how long the games become.

Had a lovely game with Tasigur this weekend. It was just Tasigur vs Meren going on 3 hours when I decided to concede in order to start a new game with players that had arrived, but I'm pretty confident I would have eventually won.

I was able to destroy Meren 2-3 times in the early game in order to slow my opponent down, as well as Trickbind Meren's trigger once when the target was something I didn't like. Used Pernicious Deed once to clear the board so that they had to spend time rebuilding. By the time I found Constant Mists I already had Life from the Loam and was at 8 life and stayed that way for a long time. Butcher of Malakir and Grave Pact on the other side of the board made sure I didn't keep any creatures, while Mazirek meant Mists was making my opponent's dudes bigger and bigger. They felt pretty confident they'd eventually wear me down, but didn't have a way to take Constant Mists out of my hand or hurt me without combat. Thanks to Seasons Past I could recur Pernicious Deed, Exploration, and other things without Tasigur. I had Oblivion Stone within reach with Academy Ruins, Cyclonic Rift in my hand, and Pernicious deed back on the battlefield.

I think he would have eventually decked himself if nothing else. Ruins + artifact lands, Volrath's Stronghold + Dryad Arbor, LftL, and Seasons Past would keep me from doing that to myself.

DirkGently do I just have really stubborn opponents or is it actually hard to see the inexorability of this style of deck when its safety nets can't be disrupted?

Quote from lyonhaert »

Had a lovely game with Tasigur this weekend. It was just Tasigur vs Meren going on 3 hours when I decided to concede in order to start a new game with players that had arrived, but I'm pretty confident I would have eventually won.

I was able to destroy Meren 2-3 times in the early game in order to slow my opponent down, as well as Trickbind Meren's trigger once when the target was something I didn't like. Used Pernicious Deed once to clear the board so that they had to spend time rebuilding. By the time I found Constant Mists I already had Life from the Loam and was at 8 life and stayed that way for a long time. Butcher of Malakir and Grave Pact on the other side of the board made sure I didn't keep any creatures, while Mazirek meant Mists was making my opponent's dudes bigger and bigger. They felt pretty confident they'd eventually wear me down, but didn't have a way to take Constant Mists out of my hand or hurt me without combat. Thanks to Seasons Past I could recur Pernicious Deed, Exploration, and other things without Tasigur. I had Oblivion Stone within reach with Academy Ruins, Cyclonic Rift in my hand, and Pernicious deed back on the battlefield.

I think he would have eventually decked himself if nothing else. Ruins + artifact lands, Volrath's Stronghold + Dryad Arbor, LftL, and Seasons Past would keep me from doing that to myself.

DirkGently do I just have really stubborn opponents or is it actually hard to see the inexorability of this style of deck when its safety nets can't be disrupted?

There's an answer for everything, it's not impossible that had something to stop your recursion. Personally I would have been too tempted to play it out.

Because 1v1 games with this type of deck can get pretty tedious I prefer to help my opponents mostly kill each other first, so I have a plan to win fairly quickly against the last remaining opponent, and try to make sure that opponent is the weakest at the table, or at least the weakest against whatever my deck is trying to do. Of course that's not always an option.

I do think it's cool that people are still working on this build.

He looked through his deck after we stopped. He didn't have any discard effects.

I figured playing it out would have taken another couple hours, though.

@DirkGently: I registered to confirm that there are ppl in the shadows still working on this. Good name btw.

The deck is still fun and one of my favorites, but I haven't seen too much in recent releases to upgrade it. Took out Bring to Light and a couple of other cards to make room for a Kederekt Leviathan package:

• Kederekt Leviathan
  
• Animate Dead
  
• Necromancy

Either of the two animation enchantments will reanimate the Leviathan, then get bounced to hand (along with all other nonland permanents) making the Leviathan die again, one working on your turn, the other at instant speed. Either way, a repeatable Devastation Tide seems amazing.
Also, Crop Rotation because I should have had it in there ages ago.
I don't find Tragic Slip doing much work for me.

Questions for those in the thread: If you could set up a ten card Death Wish board, what cards/win cons would you want to use? What do you think of adding Counterbalance and Sensei's Divining Top?

Quote from KissMyAssassin »

The deck is still fun and one of my favorites, but I haven't seen too much in recent releases to upgrade it. Took out Bring to Light and a couple of other cards to make room for a Kederekt Leviathan package:

• Kederekt Leviathan
  
• Animate Dead
  
• Necromancy

Either of the two animation enchantments will reanimate the Leviathan, then get bounced to hand (along with all other nonland permanents) making the Leviathan die again, one working on your turn, the other at instant speed. Either way, a repeatable Devastation Tide seems amazing.
Also, Crop Rotation because I should have had it in there ages ago.
I don't find Tragic Slip doing much work for me.

Questions for those in the thread: If you could set up a ten card Death Wish board, what cards/win cons would you want to use? What do you think of adding Counterbalance and Sensei's Divining Top?

Seasons Past, Disallow, and Insidious Will are pretty good inclusions so far.

Between the two reanimations I think I'd only run one of those effects, though, and probably Necromancy.

Cycling the Leviathan would very easily keep the board clear, oppress your opponents, and grind the game to a halt. But it also paints you as a threat when your opponents see those cards, which is counter to the original spirit of the design. A more defensive bounce like Ætherize or Ætherspouts can still be recurred with Tasigur, and in the right circumstance can remove potential blockers for a retaliation.

Agreed on Crop Rotation, though. With as many useful lands, fetches, and making Bojuka Bog instant speed, it's a great inclusion.

I don't see Counterbalance working very well with just Top, but maybe Scroll Rack or Noxious Revival. Countering all the things makes you a threat, too.

I find the Death Wish question rather moot because such wishes normally don't work in Commander because there is no sideboard. If you came to my group and asked if you could have a ten card sideboard we'd say, "no, you can't have 110 cards in your deck." And this is a group where we allow one or two Unhinged cards and one guy to use planeswalkers as commanders as long as they're not really strong ones.

I haven't found a need to pack the deck with various win conditions. Usually the removal/answers and Tasigur are enough for a backup win-con at the least. Spitting Image has worked well to speed things up, and I've included Rise from the Tides for testing. My hope is that early in the game when there are just a few instant/sorcery cards at most my opponents will think, "he can only make some chump blockers right now, so it's okay", and underestimate it just like they do with slivers.

The kind of decks that go rather unanswered early and mid-game even though everything is out in the open only to tighten their hold on the late game when it's too late are one of my favorites. It's how slivers usually take people by surprise and it's how the Daxos build I run works. It's the same idea with this deck although it's much more mana-intensive -- you don't want to be considered totally defenseless but you also need to retain a lower threat profile than your opponents while building resources until you only have one opponent left (usually). It's all about just surviving until that point, not controlling or oppressing the board. Then you drop pieces into play that ensure the trickle of CA and answers that helped you survive is simply magnified into a flood that overwhelms them.

That's my take on it, anyway, but it's why I try to avoid obvious win-cons and shenanigans because the visibility of them in my graveyard can raise that threat profile quite a lot. But nobody's going to expect me to generate an army of 3/3 tokens with Rapid Hybridization and Dryad Arbor as a possible win-con.

I absolutely forgot about Spitting Image, and with Dakmor Salvage and Life from the Loam, it should be very easily sustainable for repeated advantage. It's just expensive in cmc, like Seasons Past. I'm running Voidslime already and shelled out for the good looking full art, but Disallow is fine. I have one free slot so I might as well try rotating Image and Past in there, as well as Mesmeric Orb to fuel Tasigur's Delve and make sure he is cheap.
People at the shop know what the deck can do and tend to be aggressive towards it, so I have Glacial Chasm for defense, and the Leviathan looked great as another aggressive defense.
I was curious to see what people would want for their 101-110 cards if they had more deckbuilding, cards they regret cutting mainly since Death Wish covers all types not just one.

As for win cons I am running:
Thespian's Stage+Dark Depths
Strip Mine+Crucible of Worlds
Tasigur+Shizo, Death's Storehouse to make sure he connects
Animate Dead and Necromancy on a good creature of theirs
Sometimes a random blowout with a well-timed Reins of Power

Fetid Pools
Fetchable, Cycles
It's perfect for this deck.

Quote from JamesTheIV »

Anyone else thinking about running Brain in a jar in their build?

I think brain is great. While the obvious upside is to play sorceries as an instant being able to just cheat out counterspell for one less mana is still pretty decent. It also becomes easier to hold up as much blue as possible because you can spend any mana for brain activation. Brain is a pretty low investment medium to high reward card.

It's been a while, but now that Amonkhet has been released:
Fetid Pools: It's perfect for everyone running a Life from the Loam package since it also can tap for two colors if we have to go that route.
As Foretold: One of the more expensive cards in the set, but, since we usually have a low cmc, we can start working with it fast. Also, it's each turn, not just your turn, so our removal becomes that much more potent since it will be free.
Cycling Cards:

• Drake Haven
  
• New Perspectives
  
• Archfiend of Ifnir
  
• Faith of the Devoted
  
• Shadow of the Grave
  
• Ruthless Sniper

Since we already reuse cycling lands a lot, it might be worth looking into a cycling version of Tasigur if you want to try something new. That requires some reworking of the deck.
Rags//Riches: Early-game removal of utility creatures, a win-con we don't mind dredging into the graveyard. Not sure how to format this style of card for discussing. Rags to Riches? Rags//Riches? Rags\\Riches? Rags?
Approach of the Second Sun: I just like this card even though we can't run it as a win-con, forcing it through with Boseiju. That's all.
I think I'll just be adding Fetid Pools and As Foretold to mine, not sure what to cut yet, but the others are what caught my eye for this style of deck.

The formatting for the card tag is two forward slashes with spaces: Rags // Riches

As for the cycling idea, in a long enough game I've emptied my library, and cycling would only make that faster and more dangerous. I figure you'd need other safety nets for putting cards back in the library from the graveyard (or the 'Words of' cycle). Such a build of Tasigur is probably possible but it probably wouldn't be as instant-answer laden as this one. I imagine I'd end up somewhere between midrange and this build.

Dude what are you talking about? If you have emptied your library how come you have not won already? If you need to put cards back in your library then you are doing it wrong.

Quote from lyonhaert »

As for the cycling idea, in a long enough game I've emptied my library, and cycling would only make that faster and more dangerous. I figure you'd need other safety nets for putting cards back in the library from the graveyard (or the 'Words of' cycle). Such a build of Tasigur is probably possible but it probably wouldn't be as instant-answer laden as this one. I imagine I'd end up somewhere between midrange and this build.

If your library is in your graveyard, you now have enough fuel to cast Tasigur for 1 repeatedly, have a lot of cards to work with and get back, and can always put back on top of the deck an artifact with Academy Ruins to ensure you don't actually deck yourself.
The cycling just gives you more small benefits to plink away at people/creatures or gain chump blockers that can later swing, benefits that come from abilities rather than casting spells so you don't get them countered.
Also, Words of Waste is amazing.